5 minutes with C# - Get your blog in TreeView Control

I played a bit more with the Google Blogs Api and was able to create a custom TreeView control to help you get your blog in Hierarchical View. Here is a screenshot of the TreeView: The control will be soon released to my site and new blog post will be published to let you know

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Another 5 minutes with C# to post to Google Blogs (Blogger.com) using Google Blogs SDK

// Create service to be used for queries              Service service = new Service ( "blogger" , "blogger-sample" );              AtomEntry createdEntry = new AtomEntry ();              // Create credentials you should add your blog username              // and password here             service.Credentials = new GDataCredentials ( "your_username" , "your_password" );              // As I only have one blog to speed up - I am taking it,              // You can extend here in order to allow the user to              // select from mutliple

blogs if he / she has.
             Uri firstBlogUri = GetFirstBlogUri(service);
            
             // If we have the Uri - it's time to actually post.
             if (firstBlogUri != null )
            {
                // Create FeedQuery and assign Uri.
                FeedQuery query = new FeedQuery ();
                query.Uri = firstBlogUri;

                // Create Atom Feed from that query.
                AtomFeed feed = service.Query(query);

                // Create atom entry for the new post
                AtomEntry newPost = new AtomEntry ();

                // Fill in the post information
                // You need to have a control named richTextBox2 which will
                // contain the post body and a textBox1 control which will
                // contain the post title.

                newPost.Title.Text = this .textBox1.Text;
                newPost.Content = new AtomContent ();
                newPost.Content.Content = richTextBox2.Text;
                newPost.Content.Type = "html" ;
                newPost.Authors.Add( new AtomPerson ());
                newPost.Authors[0].Name = "Pavel Donchev" ;

                // Try to publish and report success / fail:
                try
                {
                   createdEntry = service.Insert(query.Uri, newPost);
                }
                catch ( Exception ex)
                {
                   MessageBox .Show(ex.Message);
                }
                if (createdEntry != null )
                {
                   MessageBox .Show(newPost.Title.Text + " posted successfully!" );
                }
            }

There is also a helper function to retrieve the blog Uri:

       Uri GetFirstBlogUri( Service service)
       {
             FeedQuery query = new FeedQuery ();
             // Retrieving a list of blogs
            query.Uri = new Uri ( "http://www.blogger.com/feeds/default/blogs" );

             AtomFeed feed = null ;
            feed = service.Query(query);
             AtomEntry entry = feed.Entries[0];
             for ( int i = 0; i < entry.Links.Count; i++)
            {
                if (entry.Links[i].Rel.Equals( "http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#post" ))
                {
                   return new Uri (entry.Links[i].HRef.ToString());
                }
            }
             return null ;
       }

5 minutes C# code to help you blog source ...

As I was unabled to find a reliable editor to convert my code samples to html, I decided to write one. You need two richTextBox components, named richTextBox1 and richTextBox2 and a Button, named button1. Here is the code you need to put into the button1 click event handler:        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)        {             string oldColor = "-";             string newColor = string.Empty;             StringBuilder strHtml = new StringBuilder();             for (int i = 0; i < this.richTextBox1.Text.Length; i++)             {                 richTextBox1.Select(i, 1);

newColor = System.Drawing.ColorTranslator.ToHtml(richTextBox1.SelectionColor);
                if ((newColor != oldColor) && (newColor != string.Empty))
                {
                   if (!oldColor.Equals("-"))
                   {
                        strHtml.Append("");
                   }
                   strHtml.Append(" + newColor + ";\">");
                   oldColor = newColor;
                }
                strHtml.Append(richTextBox1.SelectedText.Replace("<", "<").Replace(">", ">"));
                Application.DoEvents();
            }
            strHtml.Append("");
            StringBuilder sbNew = new StringBuilder();
            sbNew.Append(strHtml.ToString().Replace("   ", "   "));
            richTextBox2.AppendText(sbNew.ToString());
       }

PLEASE NOTE: this code was written in 5 or 10 minutes, it doesn't pretend to be either clean or readable, it simply works. If you want - you can take it, optimize it, use it or whatever, just have in mind it wasn't written carefully ;).

Get IIS sites and virtual directories with .NET / C# / Directory Services

public List GetSites(string serverName)        {             List Nodes = new List();             CustomTreeNode tnResult = new CustomTreeNode();             try             {                 DirectoryEntry w3svc = new DirectoryEntry("IIS://" + serverName + "/w3svc");                 foreach (DirectoryEntry entry in w3svc.Children)                 {                    if (entry.SchemaClassName == "IIsWebServer")                    {                         CustomTreeNode Site = new CustomTreeNode(entry.Properties["ServerComment"].Value.ToString());                         this.ServerLoadStart(entry.Properties["ServerComment"].Value.ToString());

/>                        Site.CurrentEntry = entry;
                        Site.ImageIndex = 1;
                        Site.SelectedImageIndex = 1;
                        Site = GetVirtualDirectories(entry, Site);
                        Site.ImageIndex = 0;
                        Site.SelectedImageIndex = 0;
                        Nodes.Add(Site);
                   }
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                string msg = ex.Message;
            }
            return Nodes;
       }
       private CustomTreeNode GetVirtualDirectories(DirectoryEntry site, CustomTreeNode Parent)
       {
            string VirDirSchemaName = "IIsWebVirtualDir";
            DirectoryEntry folderRoot = site.Children.Find("Root", VirDirSchemaName);
            foreach (DirectoryEntry deChild in folderRoot.Children)
            {
                CustomTreeNode tnFolder = new CustomTreeNode(deChild.Name);
                this.VirtualDirectoryStart(deChild.Name);
                tnFolder.ImageIndex = 0;
                tnFolder.SelectedImageIndex = 0;
                tnFolder.CurrentEntry = deChild;
                tnFolder.ImageIndex = 1;
                tnFolder.SelectedImageIndex = 1;
                Parent.Nodes.Add(tnFolder);
            }
            return Parent;
       }

Here is the result I get after few more hours of work:

The silent catch

Another of my interesting phrases (or at least I don't know if someboddy used this phrase). What is silent catch? Silent catch is a term I use for try .. catch block, where the catch does nothing or at least you don't see it to be doing anything. The first example: try { some unsafe code here ... } catch {} Another example: try { some unsafe code here ... } catch (Exception ex) { hide something (for example grid or some other control) ... return; } The second example is as bad as the first. It will be underlined by the Microsoft Visual Studio code editor to warn you that the ex object isn't used anywhere within the body of the catch statement. Today I spent about two hours to investigate why a page doesn't display

one Grid. It appeared to be beried deep inside the system (I mean it was in an ascx control). The problem appeared to be missing view in the database. Unfortunatelly after I couldn't see the exception I was forced to start from the web user interface, first I checked the settings in the application to see if it is not forbidden or something, then I started to debug, to see where this part of the page comes from. After I found it, I needed to see what's going on in the control. So it took me two hours to trace the problem. What if there were an exception with stack trace? 15 minutes of work would have been enough for me to see that the view is missing.

So:
"Try to avoid silent catch statements as they may cost you a lot of efforts to find the problem later (even if you wrote the code on your own)."

Settings, they are supposed to help ?!?

Yesterday I had a tricky problem. I client of our company complained he can't upload files on our system. I started troubleshooting the problem. Each time I clicked the "Continue" button exception was thrown as if an assembly can not be found. It was pain in the neck. The assembly was something like "System.Web.UI.MobileControls.Adapters" (I can't remember the exact name now but it doesn't matter as we didn't use that assembly at all). I asked a collegue of mine for help (thanks Vesko!). The problem was in Machine.config file so we decided to back it up and comment that provider to see what will happen. It threw an exception, but this time more reasonable. It said there is no disk space. I logged again onto the server to free some more space

and gues what? There were 60GB of free disk space! I started to think where the problem might be and tried to find solution in Google. It finally appeared that the problem is a setting within the OS. Short explanation below:
Windows 2003 Server uses NTFS file system. This file system is capable of maintaining disk quotas for each user. In other words - the administrator may define how much disk space each user can use. It was set to 1 GB for the user, running the service responsible for the upload. So I set it to 3 GB, tested to see if it works and it worked. Then I left the server and asked the administrator to decide how much disk space will be available to the user running the process.

After this space is used again I will know what to do ;).

So I learned very useful lesson - first check the settings and then try to debug or touch the code. In most cases if the code worked before and you know nothing has changed - this means that some resources available to the application before aren't available now OR someboddy changed some setting which was important for your code to run smoothly.

Surface Fixing

What is surface fixing? Surface fixing is a phrase I use for a fix, which is implemented in a layer above the layer where it occurs. If we imagine the standart 3-tier architecture and we have a bug in the Data Access Layer, surface fix will be to implement the fix in the Business layer or the Presentation Layer. It is common for junior developers or companies where the things should happen in a matter of hours or days (companies with short deadlines). Example of a surface fixing: Let's say we have a page for registering users (Presentation Layer). On user registration this page creates the User object (Business Layer). Sets its properties as necessary, and calls it's Save() method. The Save() method creates

an instance of the UserDAL object (Data Access Layer) and decides whether the task is to create new user or update existing one. Let's say we will create new user. The User Business Object -> Save() method will probably call something like : UserDAL -> InsertUser(long UserID, string UserLogon ....);

Now let's say that the Data Access Layer doesn't escape the single apostrophe in the UserLogonID. Passing parameter as O'Conner or something like this causes exceptions. The question is where should this be fixed?

I see most of you answering : "In the Data Acess Layer offcourse!". That's the best place but if you are working on a small project.

Now ask yourself what will happen if we fix this in a big enterprise system with hundreds of modules / pages referring to that particular routine? After all the other modules / pages are working they will stop working or at least stop working correctly. With other words - your fix will require the whole system to be redeveloped. And what's worse - the QA team will have a lot of work. They will love you for sure :). And to make the things even worse we will imagine that we are near the deadline (which is almost sure after we are testing already). In such cases the Surface Fixing may help.

Below I am giving the advantages and disadvantages of the Surface Fixing.

Advantages:

Your fix will not broke anything in the existing modules

The fix will only be tested, not the modules which may be affected

Ideal to use near deadlines

Disadvantages:

The fix isn't applied at the right place

Conflicts may appear in the future with modules which are working correctly

Against the official software development standarts

When to use this approach ?

When we are developing module in a big system with lot's of other modules which depend on the bug

When we are near deadline

When we are sure that there will be new version.

Conclusion:

This approach is perfect to fix some bugs in the current version, but consideration to completely fix it in the next versions should be made. It simply is not right to use this approach as a regular fixing guidance. In the software development and the 3 or more tier models the above layes should only see the previous and depend on it. And what's more important - the above layer should get the data as expected.

New company - new luck :)

Yep, only in few hours I will be on my new desk in my new company :). I am very excitet about this. The new company is Vizibility and it is developing web modules. At first glance it seemed very very interesting with all the young people there. They were very hospitable on the interview and managed to earn my complete confidence. It seems that I did that too. After I met their requirements they met mine too. So it is a big day today :). Wish me luck

!

Skype API (Skype4COM) + Google MAPS API = ? [3]

As a part of my Google Maps and Skype API I wanted to add custom icons to represent different objects on the map (currently I made it for the bus stations). The picture bellow is the result : It was again easy - we simply create GIcon object. Then we assign the URL of the image to be used, size of the icon and point, where the info window will appear : Code icon = new GIcon(); icon.image = 'BusFine.gif'; icon.iconSize = new GSize(39, 60); icon.iconAnchor = new GPoint(5, 34); icon.infoWindowAnchor = new GPoint(5, 2); Then we only need to add this object as a second parameter in the GMarker object constructor. Code // point is a GPoint object, representing the location the marker

should be
// displayed.
marker = new GMarker(point, icon);